All these years I had never joined the Open Day. Briefly, every year, for one day, our institute opens to the "civilians", especially little and older children who want to know a bit more about what might ever happen inside a research institute, students who are interested in becoming researchers, the same institute's researchers who take their families to see how they spend their day at work, and other people who simply wanted to know what was going on.

This year I decided to contribute to the Open Day, although the foreigner was yet another time used as an attraction. Me and other foreign researchers were indeed put in a room to sign business cards and greet visitors using words from our own language, so to involve the Japanese into a multicultural environment, where we do not only do science….

But our activity was popular just because -provided that they could get our signatures- children could get gadgets as presents, typically one of those many objects that make the biologist's toolbox.

Many of the kids who patiently waited inline for our autographs were literally paralyzed, they didn't speak, they didn't move…..they were actually scared! Many of them may have never seen a non Japanese.

Perhaps they didn't expect that we could speak their language. Perhaps they didn't expect we could speak.

Some others, instead, took the opportunity to show off their most perfect "thank you", just to demonstrate they, too, know a foreign language.

Most of them reacted positively to the simple "ciao", and not only the kids.

It was hard work, though, imagine to write down your name for 5 hours, hundreds of times, talk with the little ones and the grown ups….at the same time it was an interesting and fun day. And I even tried to fold a DNA origami :)